Spanish Fiesta Day at Ladymount Primary School

On Thursday 14th April, Passport Language Solutions hosted a ‘Fiesta Day’ at Ladymount Primary School. This half term, Lady Mount has been studying Spain as their topic and decided they wanted to conclude the topic with a ‘Fiesta Day’ held by us.

The purpose of the day was to provide a full day of activities designed to introduce children to some of the many Spanish festivals and to also give them the opportunity to participate in the celebrations. The ‘Fiesta Day’ started at 9.15am when the pupils from year 3 and two year 4 classes gathered in the hall to discover what their day had in store for them as well as filling in their personal details on their passport which would later give the children the opportunity to win some prizes.

After their assembly, pupils were divided into their year groups and taken to their first fiesta experience. Each experience lasted 40 minutes then the classes rotated to experience even more Spanish fiestas. The fiestas that pupils learnt about included San Fermin otherwise known as the running of the bulls. During this session pupils were shown pictures and told stories of what happens during San Fermin and they then got to make their own ‘san fermin’ costumes out of a white bin bag (for trousers and a top) along with red material that they used to make a sash and neckerchief. They then got to go outside and rein act their own ‘San Fermin’ experience with a handful of children being bulls who chased after everyone in the streets (yard).

In addition to this, La Tomatina, Carnival and Las Fallas were also celebrated. To celebrate ‘La Tomatina’, the children got to throw tomatoes (sponges dipped in watered down red paint) at their chosen silhouette that they had previously drawn and named! This particular festival proved to be very popular amongst the children and teachers who, as you would expect, got a little messy. Las Fallas also proved to be very messy but of course very fun at the same time. After being taught about how people create ‘statues’ of famous people, politicians and cartoons known as ‘Fallas’ to burn at the end of the festival, children had the opportunity to make their own ‘Fallas’ out of papier mache. There were some very original ideas including Sponge Bob square pants, Prince Charles with his big ears and Lady GaGa with her unusual hair styles. Finally, the children learnt about ‘Carnaval’ in Spain and were shown lots of pictures of how people dress up for this. The children got to make their own colourful and imaginative mask as part of their ‘Carnaval’ experience and the results really were impressive. The children made some beautiful masks and clearly put a lot of effort into making them extra special.

After lunch, all of the groups gathered in the hall to take part in some ‘flamenco’ dancing with one pupil even playing the guitar for the event…very impressive! Once again, all of the children gave 100% effort and soon learnt the dance steps. In fact, they all looked like professionals by the end of the session. Watch out strictly come dancing! After their dancing fun, the children had to use their acting skills to help rein act a folk story told during ‘las fiestas de otoño’. The story was called ‘La Castañera’ and was about a chestnut seller and her strange tale of her chestnuts disappearing from her basket and turning out to be snails. As the story was told, different children came up to act out the story and when we came across a chant or song she sang, everyone joined in.

To end the day, the hundreds of photos that were taken throughout the day were shown to everyone on a slide show which the children seemed to love. The passports that the children were given at the beginning of the day were collected in and put in a hat. Four passports were then picked and each child won a prize of either a Spanish T-Shirt or a Spanish Learn and Colour Book.

Passport Language Solutions would like to say well done to those children who won the prizes and a big thank you to all of the pupils of years 3 and 4 and the class teachers for such a fantastically fun day. We hope you had as much fun as we did.

If you are interested in holding a culture day similar to the ones mentioned above, please contact ……..!